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Page One: Bag of Bones by Kate Evangelista

The first time she fell down the stairs, he listened to the echoes of the sound her head, shoulders, and hips hitting the tiles on concrete made. He thought it was the best sound in the world, coupled with the little whimpers escaping her throat. Whether the little sounds she made were from pain or joy, he wasn’t too sure. When her body rolled onto the landing, she took a minute before sitting up. He thanked the heavens she was a sturdy little thing. How he would hate for her to break now after years of training.

He first met her in high school. She was the shy type, remaining quiet when there was a discussion, but when asked for her opinion she’d give a good one. She was an observer and a listener. If there was something someone wanted to know about the “goings on,” she would be the one to go to. Of course, not everyone knew about her voyeuristic tendency.

She had to become his friend. He wasted no time in getting to know her.

They became close in high school, but nothing romantic. She enjoyed his company and his palms became sweaty every time he wanted to hit her. He knew somewhere inside her was a girl who liked pain, and he was the kind of boy who would be glad to give it. The main reason he thought this about her was every time he saw her fall, she would look at the ground and smile. There was even a time she twisted her ankle and not a sound came out of her. He was the one who brought her to the clinic and stayed to watch the nurse bind her foot. She just smiled the whole time, and he salivated. He ached to be the one to bind her ankle tight, if only to coax a tiny whimper out of her.

He wanted to hear her whimper. He even dreamt about how she’d sound when the pain would be so intense that her only option was to cry out. It became his obsession, and when they entered college, he decided that she should be his girlfriend to test it out. Certainly, he couldn’t carry out his plans if she wasn’t emotionally tied to him. The courting, the flowers, the dates, the sex – everything he could do to make her fall in love with him. When he was sure that she was finally trapped, his heart leapt for joy.

It all started with a little S&M. He was the giver and she was the receiver. It only surprised him a little at how willing she was to participate. Little by little, he escalated his experiments with her body. He still remembered her first whimper. It was the time he pulled out one of her fingernails with a pair of pliers. She bled so much that he had to stop and bandage her wound. It was still too early for her to leave him.

Years, she held on for years. He didn’t quite understand why she didn’t struggle or run away from him. She just took everything he could give her. Every time he hit her, she just got right back up and prepared for the next blow. There was a brief moment when he thought he could no longer continue, but it was only a very brief moment. The expression in her eyes turned glassy by the time he started pushing her down the stairs. First, he tried it facing forward, then backward, then from the side, and even sitting down. He never knew there were so many ways to push someone down the stairs.

The last time she went down the stairs was in a trash bag. It had been five years, and finally, she hit her head so hard that she never got back up. He mourned for a moment; then went into the apartment they shared and placed her inside the black trash bag. There was no need to cut her up since her body was so battered that the bones had fractured in so many places. He didn’t even lift her. He just pulled her and listened to the thumping she made down each step. The final the thud she made when he heaved her into the dumpster was a heartwarming end to their relationship. Now, he thought, he could move on.